Tadej Pogačar -- greatest talent since Lance or fraud like Lance?

Pogacar just knows how to dig. So impressive.

Mauro Gianetti.

Have a beer. It's over.

Good point. Like Lance.

I'd prefer to stick with the "innocent until proven guilty" approach, as the alternative is a kind of cynicism in which I'll never be able to truly appreciate a great athlete/performance ever again.

However, if evidence (actual evidence; not great performances) comes to light that he's dirty, I'll be the first to suggest a lifetime ban - as should be the fate of all dopers.

I cycle. I'm not on drugs. The playing field isn't flat.

Do you believe that a doped up rider is pushing his metabolism beyond human limits?

Am starting to realize most of these guys in the Tour are like D2-D3 runners with very few D1 talents out there. Yesterday was an epic stage, but in an all white sport in which we have no idea the true talent level of these people, the true studs are the Armstrongs and Pogacars of the Tour. Everyone else just a participant, much like a road marathon.

Yetserday was simply amazing drama but then you realize the dude is catching guys that have no idea how to race or manage their energies.

Innocent until proven guilty is the correct line of thinking, as in you cannot take action on someone because "you think", however it isn't mutually exclusive with being suspicious either.

By definition I believe if you are at the top of what you do, then in athletics at least, doping / grey area / other bending of rules is part of it. You can't even go online and play an anonymous web game of geoguessr without someone cheating you, for no reason, no gain, no fame.

I actually didn't mind that Lance was on PEDs to the gills. I viewed it as "fair" because his rivals were as well. Lance was a hell of a talent. Even prior to being on PEDs, which may have been before or after he won the world championship in Norway, he had huge amounts of natural ability.

What makes Lance an ass and dbag is the way that he treated others...

Getting into a break with Filippo Simeoni and forcing him to come back into the peloton where he was verbally abused and spat on. This was all because Simeoni was talking about
Michele Ferrari.

Confronting Tyler Hamilton in a bar in Colorado and basically challenging him to a fight.

Mocking David Walsh at a press conference.

Calling Emma O'Reilly a whore and a slut and basically ruining her professionally.

Treating Betsy Andreu even worse than O'Reilly.

Trying to ruin Floyd Landis once Landis came clean.

Ruining Greg LeMond's biking business and worse. What he did to LeMond is despicable.

There are many, many others...

Speaking of LeMond, as talented as Armstrong was, he did not have a fraction of the natural talent that LeMond had. Armstrong knew it and it ate him up. If the two of them competed at the same time and both competed cleanly, LeMond would have detroyed Armstrong and it would not have been close.

It's not the PEDs and all of that that makes me despise Lance, it is everyting else about him. He is scum.

Pogačar looks cho chweet like a baby lamb.

When it comes to cycling, it is guilty until proven innocent. Casual fans like to think the sport is somehow clean now. That is a joke. The most sophisticated doping in the world happens in cycling. It has always been that way.

Combine that with the uci taking a more nfl like approach to doping these days and the positive tests have dried up. No one wants to see how the sausage is made. Best to pretend it is magic.

No. They are all very talented riders. Watch carefully and see how each team works and how much effort is required to support the best rider for 3 weeks. And all the other races they do too.

The difference between the top riders is extremely small. You must realize that the raced for over 170 km and finished on a long steep climb with only small time gaps between the top riders.

Great talent. Seemingly true efforts. He smartly relies on his team. Van Aert in yellow going in a breakaway was not smart. Powless giving up 4 seconds behind. Now he's just riding out the tour. In his interview he said he didn't think he could challenge Pogacar. Now they don't even talk about him being a contender. He needs to change his attitude and develop a strategy like the other riders. Winning at pro level shouldn't be easy. But geez Powless, give it a better effort!

So do you believe that doping gives superhuman metabolism?

Go on think about it. Actually think instead of repeating what you heard or read somewhere.

Can you do that? Or am I expecting too much?

Doping questions aside, cycling seems to usually have one rider who is a lot better than everyone else at the TdF and they win for a while.

Give a better effort? Really? Have you ever done any racing?

Mr orange, you don’t have to break the laws of thermodynamics to improve performance with drugs. You make such strange arguments.

Is your point that Kamna and the other guys in the breakaway got caught because they had 'no idea how to race or manage their energies'?

The letsrun TDF threads are always so funny.

You don't have any idea what you are talking about.

The humblest domestiques on a Grand Tour team are insanely good riders. They all have incredible handling skills and an FTP with a floor of around 5 watts/ kg. The winner of your local Cat III crit race probably has an FTP in the low 4s.

Domestiques are expected to ride in ways that are contrary to their individual finish in order to protect their #1 GC rider. Even GC riders will bag certain stages in order to focus on the stages that are best suited for their individual strengths.

Mark MFing Cavendish has the 2nd most wins in TdF history and just won the British national championships. He got left off his team's Tour de France squad this year because Quickstep thinks their younger bunch sprinter Fabio Jakobsen is better right now.

It's incredibly hard to make a grand tour squad. There are not any scrub TdF riders.